Unwittingly also demonstrates her extensive practice of law from her Massachusetts office

Minutes before tonight’s debate, Elizabeth Warren issued a list of all of the cases she has worked on since joining Harvard. It was an impressive list, proving what I have said all along, she practiced law on a regular basis from her Harvard office. But she was not licensed in Massachusetts.

Via The Boston Globe, here are the cases (I did not include the case descriptions provided by Warren):

Elizabeth Warren tonight, just before the debate, bowed to a request by Scott Brown to release a list of her legal clients. The Warren campaign emailed what they called a full roster of her cases, prompting Warren to call on Brown during the debate to release his own list…. Here is the list released by Warren.

Here is the paragraph which I linked in my prior post from Warren’s 2002 sworn Statement listing the bankruptcy court cases she was working on at the time as well as some earlier legal representations. I have highlighted cases or matters not on the list just released by Warren:

10. …. In addition to these academic and legislative activities, have consulted with a number of companies on mass tort issues. I served in an advisory capacity to Dow Chemical, the parent company of Dow Coming, in the early days of the Dow Coming bankruptcy I have assisted the Johns Manville Trustand the National Gypsum Trust in appellate litigation. I have been an expert witness on behalf of the National Gypsum Trust and the Fuller Austin trust. These trusts were formed as part of the confirmation of a plan of reorganization in mass tort asbestos bankruptcies. I have assisted in the preparation for petitions for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court in two cases involving future claims, one in an environmental context and one in an employee liability context. I have argued a case on behalf of Fairchild Aviation, an airplane manufacturer facing future claims liability. I have filed an amicus brief in future claims litigation involving Piper Aircraft. [Note – it appears there was a paragraph numbering problem in the original, and that the above paragraph was supposed to be numbered “11”]

The bankruptcy cases listed in paragraph 12 were legal representations in which Warren submitted bills, for which we have some documentation from public records, for “professional legal services.”

So Warren’s case list of cases is incomplete. She also doesn’t list legal representations which did not involve filed cases, for example, where she advised companies or individuals.

For someone who claims to have come clean, Warren didn’t do a very good job.

Equally important for the issue of whether Warren was practicing law in Massachusetts without a license, we now have documented at least 22 cases Warren handled from her Massachusetts office.

Update: Looks like someone is leaving wiggle room about whether the list is complete, because the Globe now has changed the headline to Prior to debate, Warren releases information on her cases and has changed the key sentence to “The Warren campaign emailed a list of cases she had been involved in, saying they had been found in a search of various legal databases.” No longer is the list claimed to be complete, which we know it is not. The Warren campaign cannot blame the “databases,” all they had to do was read this blog and Warren’s 2002 sworn Statement.

Notice Warren’s political trick. Minutes before the debate, before anyone could check the list, she claims she released a list of clients, and she repeated that claim during the debate. Warren made much of it, but now it turns out it is not complete.

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he’s an ethical, wonderful, magnificent Native-American-ish person who is doing Good Work on behalf of lots of clients, but doesn’t need a license because she isn’t really practicing law in the strict sense of the Massachusetts definition…

lawyers commonly keep a “conflicts log”. I have software that helps me in my practice, and one feature is throwing up a flag if the data-base finds a conflict or even potential conflict between clients.

It used to be done by hand, but it WAS done by anyone who wanted to keep out of trouble.

I’m aware of the conflict catching idea for lawyers (full disclosure: I occasionally do med-mal consulting as an expert witness). Clearly a lawyer would not want to be in conflict, even inadvertently.

I’m aware that large firms handle this on behalf of all their lawyers and staff, dedicating some staff resources to ensure that it is done properly. Smaller firms and solo lawyers do this in other ways.

So question #1: does Harvard Law need to do this on behalf of their faculty, or do the faculty keep track of this on their own? I ask from ignorance; I don’t know what the standard is for a law school.

Question #2: if a law school has to handle conflict catching for its faculty, does it do so to ensure that the faculty are not in conflict in the cases that the faculty are consulting on (e.g., so that if Prof. Jones represented Acme Inc in the past, she/he doesn’t fall into conflict by taking on RoadRunner Enterprises a few years down the line), OR does the law school handle conflict catching to keep their faculty from being in conflict with THEM (e.g., so that the faculty doesn’t represent a client that is suing a person/corporation that donates to the endowment fund).

Question #3: I imagine that conflict catching is sensitive. Is the information public or discoverable? May a bar association examine or mandate disclosure? Again, I ask from ignorance.

Jeez Professor Jacobson be careful or Professor Warren and her minions may accuse you of trying to confuse the issue by presenting relevant facts. And you know how those non-lawyering lawyers and their people can be….

My god, how hard is it to go through your billing records for the past 15 years and figure out who the clients are? I mean seriously, its not hard. If its this hard for her, should we be thinking about asking the more serious question of whether she has faithfully represented all of her income to the IRS and MA dept of revenue?

Brown has to be careful – he cannot be seen as badgering a woman in a debate. Chivalry does occasionally come into play even in these course and crude days in which we live.

But Brown can now take this list that Warren has provided and then ask the relevant question: if these are your clients, where is the proof that you passed the bar in Massachusetts. Certainly, Professor Warren, you couldn’t have been practicing law without a license, could you?

BTW, does anyone else immediately think of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas whenever they see David Gregory on television?

Here’s what I noticed: the Globe characterized the news just the way Warren wished, when it first published the news release, and–in perfect lockstep– changed the description to something a little less misleading when told to do so.

To claim “Globe Staff” authored that piece is wrong: it should read “Warren Campaign Staff”.

Faux-Cherokee and not a very competent attorney- she doesn’t seem to see the unintended consequences of her statements before she makes them. No wonder she had to take “trailing spouse” status until she hit upon the “minority, woman of color” scam.

Suggestion to anyone who lives in MA – especially Scott Brown or his campaign manager:

Write letters to the editor(s) of the Globe, Herald, etc. (and USA Today and/or the Wall Street Journal, perhaps), calling for an investigation on Warren’s practice of law in MA without passing a MA bar – and cite the relevant rules/laws/etc. (The smart campaign staff could contact Prof. Jacobson so they can use his blog posts.) The Herald is the more conservative paper, I believe; if the Globe won’t print it, then the Herald will…..and if it is in the WSJ, it may FINALLY get some light shed on this ethics scandal.

Since the print media and the broadcast media in MA are not putting this in the news, an open call for an investigation, along with relevant supporting documentation to back the need, will FORCE the issue to be “in the news.”

Any takers? Scott Brown (and his campaign staffers), ARE YOU LISTENING?! You don’t have time to waste! Time to FORCE the faux journalists in MA and in the MSM in general to REPORT the FACTS and do their job! Expose this woman for the fraud she is!

Over the past week, more problems about Warren’s background have emerged, creating new territory for Brown to question. It appears that she practiced law without a Massachusetts license. Lizzy went before a federal appellate court on behalf of a Massachusetts client regarding Massachusetts law. Note the key word: “Massachusetts.” What’s Warren’s response? She is a member of the Texas and New Jersey bars. That’s not exactly accurate. Houston, we have a problem. She has not been actively licensed by Texas since 1992, and she admitted on the radio to being an inactive member in New Jersey. Oops.

An online Lawyer Weekly’s poll shows that an overwhelming majority of people think Warren should be investigated for this lapse in professional conduct. However, the Massachusetts bar cannot pull her license if she never had one. As a JAG lawyer who has obeyed the rules, Brown should pounce on this issue and ask for answers.

I was listening to Todd & Michelle on WRKO this morning. They had a reporter from the Boston Globe call in. They asked the reporter about this issue. He says it’s a non issue, only being brought up by “right wing bloggers”. Todd told the reporter that maybe they should do some actual investigations into it, but the guy totally brushed the issue off and I’m sure the Globe will continue to ignore the facts.

Warren is too big to fail for the Democrats. I feel horrible for the Cherokee woman, who did the research on lineage. I live in Massachusetts, so I expect this. No one in my circle cares, it doesn’t matter to them.

As a Catholic, it is painful, to see fellow Catholics defend the Democratic party more then God. If “Piss Christ” had a (D) next to its name on the ballot, they would vote D over leaving it blank.

who wasAs a liberal born and raised in MAssachusetts, I can provide some guidance on this issue.

Repeat after me: Dow Chemical, Dow Chemical, Dow Chemical.

Liberals hate Dow Chemical! The ONLY way that Elizabeth Warren did work for Dow Chemical would be if she thought it would never come to light. The optics are bad on this one.

Among its other activities, Dow Chemical invented Napalm. Napalm.

And that’s not getting into the whole purchasing Union Carbide/then restructuring to avoid liability for Bhopal episode that Elizabeth Warren was involved in. What was she thinking, doing consulting for Dow Chemical?

Seriously – focus on Warren’s work for Dow Chemical. That is the name that jumped out at me from the list.